Colbert on the pandemic, George Santos, Stormy Daniels, and missing monkeys

I wrote "I just hope the animals missing from the Dallas Zoo are O.K." as an aside in 'SNL' searches for comedy in classified documents. Stephen Colbert returned to that topic after opening with an update on the pandemic, George Santos, and The Former Guy paying hush money to Stormy Daniels, which resulted in his former lawyer going to prison. Watch George Santos Gives Up Committee Spots | Stormy Daniels Is Back! | Monkey Mysteries.

Rep. George Santos is stepping down from his committee assignments after a talk with Kevin McCarthy, the former president may face indictment over his payment to Stormy Daniels, and Stephen looks into some recent zoo animal disappearances.

I passed along the expert opinions that COVID-19 would likely become an endemic disease in Vox and FiveThirtyEight on the future of COVID-19, a pandemic anniversary update, two years ago and the Biden Administration has decided that's happened. Sometimes I wish the experts and I weren't right.

On the other hand, I'm pleased that my prediction that Santos will be a great inspiration for comedy as long as he stays in the news continues to come true. He deserved his committee assignments even less than Marjorie Taylor Greene and I'm glad he voluntarily gave them up instead of having to be removed. Now to see how long he remains in Congress.

TFG's legal troubles deserve a post of their own when indictments actually come down, so I'm moving on to the monkeys. Colbert's writers and animators had their own idea of the culprit in The Dallas Zoo Monkey Burglar Has Been Found.

The suspect is described as dressed in yellow and wearing a tall yellow hat…

That's funny, but the truth is both better and worse, as NBC Dallas-Fort Worth reported in Missing Dallas Zoo Monkeys Found in Lancaster.

Dallas police said that they found the two emperor tamarin monkeys after getting a tip. Police said they then went to the empty home in Lancaster, located just south of Dallas, and found the monkeys safe in a closet.

That's the good news. I found the rest disturbing.

No arrests have been made.

The empty building where the monkeys were found was recently broken into and filled with wild animals, according to a nearby church that owned the property and planned to use it as a youth center.
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A spokesman for the Family Center church says the organization is working with police to identify the person responsible.

Whoever is responsible didn't just target monkeys.

It's the fourth suspicious incident at the zoo since the start of the new year -- the first involving a clouded leopard, Nova, who escaped her enclosure after police discovered it had been intentionally cut. As Dallas Police opened a criminal investigation, zoo staff members the next day found a similar intentional cut on the enclosure that houses langur monkeys, all of whom were accounted for. Most recently, an endangered vulture was found dead with an "unusual wound," zoo officials said. Dallas Police later said they were investigating the death as being suspicious.

Yikes! Here's to the person or persons responsible being found and brought to justice.

I'm not done with animals. Stay tuned for Groundhog Day.